Retired hockey star Martin St. Louis was like that. Undrafted and unloved at 5-foot-8 (5-7 was closer to reality), St. Louis carried a chip on his shoulder — nearly as big as the man himself — throughout his remarkable career. Not even a Stanley Cup championship or MVP season could penetrate the attitude.

“He looks like he wants to chew somebody’s leg off just to win a hockey game,” former Tampa Bay Lightning general manager Jay Feaster once said of St. Louis.

Roy MacGregor and I waited around to speak to St. Louis during one of his last visits to Ottawa with the New York Rangers. Marty had his head down, untying his skates, as he mumbled answers. Then we inquired about his sons playing minor hockey in Connecticut. Instantly, his head came up, his eyes lit up. The veil of anger was lifted and St. Louis became human again.

In the hours leading up to the 104th Grey Cup, it’s important to know that Ottawa Redblacks quarterback Henry Burris is a bit like St. Louis. He needs to feel no one gives him a chance to succeed, whether or not that is true.

After all, Burris has won a couple of Grey Cups and CFL outstanding player awards. With Hall of Fame credentials, he is highly respected within the game for his leadership, ability to manage a game, and for a fitness regimen that puts the 41-year-old in the realm of a quarterback years younger.

In the past weeks and months we’ve also discovered: Henry is still mad at the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for letting him go in 2014, mad at the Calgary Stampeders for trading him to Hamilton in 2012, and was oh-so-mad at the TSN panel for its on-air criticism earlier this season when Burris was fighting to retain the starting job in Ottawa over Trevor Harris.

At halftime of a game against the Edmonton Eskimos, Burris lashed out at the people “talking junk” about him, telling them to “shove it.” This was said on-air to a TSN camera. He said later that “all these guys at TSN want to jump on me every week.”

No one could find a particularly incendiary criticism beyond the usual QB-having-a-bad-night kind of thing. But Burris, desperate to retain his job, went out and led his team to a 23-20 victory in that second half versus the Eskimos, easily converting anger back to game focus.

Against the odds, he held off Harris, who had been brilliant after Burris suffered a finger injury earlier in the season.

If you’ve met Henry, you will know the anger fits him like a bad suit. He is, by well-earned reputation ‘Smilin’ Hank,’ one of the most engaging and personable athletes to have come through our fair town. He makes time for fans, for children, even for ink-stained wretches of the press corps. Listen to Henry — close your eyes and listen — and the cadence of that flowing, stream of consciousness monologue reminds one of Muhammad Ali speaking.

Burris grew up in Spiro, Okla. Ali, as Cassius Clay, was from Louisville, Ky. Ali talked trash, always smiling. He didn’t play the anger card. Didn’t need to. While Ali infuriated others with his chirps and insults, he rarely doubted himself, nor felt the doubt of others.

Unlike Marty St. Louis, who carried his chip like a cross, Henry turns the anger-as-fuel emotion on and off like a switch.

At the Grey Cup in Toronto this week, Burris is wearing the black cowboy hat he wore in Calgary in 2008, to remind him of that championship — and to remind him he still has a hate on for Sunday’s opponent: the highly favoured Stampeders.

“As athletes we always try to find that extra little something to get us going, to pee us off and to really get our blood boiling,” Burris told Don Landry of CFL.ca last month.

The future of Burris is a hot Grey Cup topic. He re-worked his contract to keep going through 2017, but may ask out of Ottawa if he doesn’t get to start. The plan of transition has Harris taking over the job next season.

Who knows, around this time next year, 42-year-old Burris may be the quarterback of Saskatchewan or someplace, angry at the Redblacks for not believing in him.

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